


Flashfire

by darthneko



Series: Original Sin [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: kink_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-19
Updated: 2009-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:20:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were, all of them, the same. They were, all of them, different. The ones who were good at it. The ones who weren't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashfire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kink Bingo - physical restraint, holding down

They were, all of them, the same. Brilliant - you had to be, to pass the state exams, and there was no denying that this was the largest gathering of Amestris' finest minds that had ever been assembled outside of Central HQ. Driven - to take the exams in the first place, to sacrifice freedom for knowledge, to maintain a license year after year. Exceptional.

Dusty. Sandy. Thirsty. Tired. The bright sun that beat down relentlessly on the Ishballan desert didn't make any distinction no matter how brilliant you were and they had all quickly learned than an armed Ishballan didn't either.

They were, all of them, different. 98.2% of them had never seen actual combat before and it drove through them like a grenade through soft wood, scattering chips everywhere. The ones who functioned under fire. The ones who froze. The ones who were eager, the ones who were reluctant, the ones who laughed, who cried, who went still and silent or crackled with the electric energy of adrenaline.

The ones who were good at it. The ones who weren't.

Zolf Kimberly had found he was not only good at it, he excelled at it.

The point eight percent who weren't like the rest of them were the old timers, men past their prime, and even they had their similarities. The ones who were good at it were the generals and ranking brass, career military who wore their medals and wounds with pride and sent younger men out to do what they no longer could. And the others… well. Retired State Alchemists recalled to duty by draft papers. Researchers gone soft in their laboratories, pulled out and shipped off to test their work in the field. They didn't mix well with the younger men, they weren't the right peer group - the researchers clustered together like frightened chicks to squawk their complaints and argue their points. The retirees were backup at best, canon fodder at worst - what else could you expect from men who had laid down their alchemy license to retire to civilian life? They hadn't kept up with current findings, they were rusty and their ideas were outdated. They didn't want to be there, not even in the complicent agreement of being a State Alchemist, and their resentment simmered at the tables they clustered at in the mess, talking about civilian lives they had left behind, families and normal jobs and things the younger men had nothing to relate to.

At least, that was what Kimberly had thought, and no one who had been deployed with one of the older men had brought back any report to convince him otherwise. Which was why, the morning the duty office called him forward with another name he didn't recognize - a proper name, not an alchemist's title - and one of the retirees stepped forward, he had barely bitten back a groan. He wasn't sure what he had done to deserve babysitting duty but it was, in Kimberly's opinion, a stronger deterrernt than disciplinary measures against accidentally doing whatever it was again.

"Don't slow me down," he had told the other man when they had their orders and were out of the officer's hearing, "and don't get in my way."

The older man - and he at least wasn't soft like some of the others, tall and broad shouldered in a uniform that halfway fit - raised an eyebrow but his eyes behind the lenses of his glasses stayed mild. "All right," he agreed, falling in two steps behind Kimberly, which suited the younger man just fine. If the man could just stay out of his way along with the enlisted grunts then they might even get through the rest of the day.

It went surprisingly better than Kimberly could have predicted.

They had been deployed to flush out a resistance nest to the south. The trek out there had been nothing but steadily rising heat and watching for snipers; the resistance itself was holed up in a rabbit warren of shell-hole riddled buildings, too tall and close together for Kimberly's liking, when every darkened window and blasted entry or ragged rooftop could house a rifle pointed at their heads. The older man had eyed the clustered remnants of the district blocks from under a raised hand, squinting against the sun that reflected white light off his lenses. "Deploy the men to hold a quarantine while we quarter and search?" he had suggested, and it had given Kimberly a moment's pause, calm and sensible all at once, forcing him to revise his opinion - maybe he had lucked out and the man _had_ seen action before, a re-actived retired soldier instead of a sheltered academic.

Kimberly gestured, hands spreading wide to indicate the span of the blocks and the cluster of the squad that was backing them up. "We don't have enough men to hold a line," he had pointed out, smiling. "But… they could hold one side, if we flush them out."

The older man's mouth had twisted beneath the frame of his neat trimmed beard, something almost thoughtful in the pull of it. "A fox hunt, with you and I as the hounds?"

"So glad we're on the same page," Kimberly had agreed. A quick gesture sent the squad - the leader of whom had worked with Kimberly before - moving out at double time to take up positions and then, with one eye on his fellow alchemist, Kimberly had brought his hands together, the arrays inked into the skin of his palms tingling.

The explosion had been a minor one, nothing but an opening volley, the charged side of a building ripping itself apart in a burst of sound and blasted stone chips. It wasn't, he was disappointed to see, a load bearing wall - the building shuddered, wavering, but stood. It was, however, worth it for the expression on the other man's face; mouth pressed thin and tight, jaw squared, eyes gone momentarily wide.

"You do have _some_ tricks useful in this sort of situation, I presume?" Kimberly had inquired, deceptively mild.

"I can manage," the other man had ground out in a bass rumble, and then brought his own bared hands together in a sharp clap that tore the whole damned building down, mortar turned to so much dust and bricks tumbled over like children's toy blocks before the slap of the larger man's hand.

It had surprised an honest laugh out of Kimberly, bubbling up bright and exhilarated on the surging tide of adrenaline. It was beautiful after that; a man who could match him stroke for stroke, their combined alchemy ripping broad swathes of destruction through brick and concrete, billowing dust dimming the burning sun overhead and their enemy fleeing before them like so many rats before a flood, straight into the waiting rifles of the Amestris firing squad. Kimberly watched it with satisfaction; at his side the older man looked on briefly and then turned away, the lenses of his glasses mirrored opaque white in a thick layer of dust.

The older man had said nothing all the way back to base, but just past the perimeter Kimberly had turned to him, one hand casually held out. "That was well done."

There weren't many in the Amestris army who would willingly shake hands with the Crimson Alchemist, too aware and wary of the black lined arrays on his palms. The older man, who had stood shoulder to shoulder with Kimberly all day long, flicked a frowning glance down at his extended hand and then clasped it briefly - a firm brusque press, palm to palm and tight grasp of fingers - before letting go and turning away, back stiff and strides long.

Kimberly raised his hands, idly brushing dirt and grit from his palms. His arrays, two perfect halves of a whole equation, stood out darkly against his dusty skin. Kimberly blew the dust off, watching it puff out into the heated air, and watched the other alchemists' broad shoulders disappear around one of the tents through the haze.

Hohenheim Elric had broad hands, square and strong, with blunt tipped fingers and neat trimmed nails that bore old stains probably from chemicals or ink. He hadn't balked or hesitated through the mission, carrying his own share of the task without a word, solid stone so much malleable tissue paper before his hands.

What he didn't have, so far as Kimberly could see, was any arrays similar to Kimberly's own inked into the palms that he had repeatedly clapped together.

Kimberly shoved his own hands into his pockets, humming thoughtfully to himself, and went to find the duty officer and make his report.

* * * * *

Elric, Kimberly found, was simple enough to find, but impossible to find out _about_. The older man spent his evenings and off duty hours with the rest of the retirees and the drafted researchers; he was close with both Marcoh and Majihal, two of the researchers, and could often be found with one or the other of them, heads bent close over a table strewn with written notes on scraps of paper. Over the next week Kimberly chalked up a handful of facts to add to this - the glasses Elric wore were not for show, the man was very nearsighted. He hailed from a tiny town in the southeast by the name of Resembol. He had family there, a pregnant wife and an infant son; in the evenings, after dinner, he would write letters home to them. Elric had, before marrying, been a State Alchemist; he had resigned his commission and retired but remained in contact with many of his contemporaries, exchanging research and letters with them.

No one, however, not even his one time peers, could say what his specialty had once been, or what his State Alchemist name had been. He performed his orders with commendable precision but wanted to be in Ishbal no more than most of them did. He could, when put to it, explode, melt, extrude, set fire to, sculpt, and deconstruct any substance he set hands to. He wore no gloves, like Mustang, or gauntlets, like Armstrong. In the evenings Elric wrote long alchemical proofs on papers that he traded back and forth with his companions but on the field alchemy flowed raw from the man's bare hands and neither hand carried an array.

It made Kimberly's palms itch just to think of it.

They were paired together on two more missions over the following weeks, once a boring stint of perimeter securement, the second similar to their first, cleanup versus armed Ishballan guerillas in a deadly game of hide and seek. He _liked_ it, Kimberly had decided; not just the clean artistry of the explosions or the thrill of the job, but the particular exhilaration of having a man at his side who could _keep up with him_. They complemented each other, like musical harmonies carved out in a symphony of destruction.

The other man didn't appreciate it the way Kimberly did, but he never hesitated. Not in carrying out orders, not in alchemy, not even when, after it was all over and they were rounding up their squad, a bullet had cut clean between the both of them with only an inch to spare. It sliced close enough to rip through Elric's sleeve before exploding in a shower of blood and bone through the skull of the squadron commander and they had both jumped but it was Elric who came up with the deceased man's gun in his hand almost before the body hit the ground.

His other hand closed on the younger man's wrist, jerking Kimberly's hand against the steel. "Charge it," he barked, and it was _perfect_ \- the gun beneath his palms, the round loaded in the chamber, alchemy tingling hot through his skin to sink into metal. Delicate - powder to work around and the sensitive mechanisms of the trigger - but Elric never flinched and the moment Kimberly released the rifle he raised it, stock fitted to his broad shoulder as he dipped his head to sight the length back the way the sniper's shot had come. His finger on the trigger was smooth and easy, as steady as he ever was with pencil on paper.

The resulting explosion blew three floors off of the top of a building, alchemy delivered on the loaded tip of a rifle bullet, and Kimberly could feel the heat of it all the way through to his bones.

The squadron closed around them, charged with their protection, but no other shots came. Kimberly had found himself laughing, a low chuckle that bubbled up through the singing warmth inside. Elric, blowing gold strands of hair that had escaped the tie at the nape of his neck out of his eyes, had lowered the rifle just a touch unsteadily. "Not exactly like hunting deer," he had confessed, and it had only made Kimberly laugh harder.

It wasn't until they were nearly back at base that he realized Elric's quiet was more than just the uptight silence that the other man tended to fall into after missions. The man's steps were heavier, his jaw tight beneath his beard, and when Kimberly reached for the other man's shoulder he touched wet fabric, his palm coming away as red as his alchemical namesake.

Swearing, Kimberly grabbed at Elric's collar. "You're bleeding."

Mouth twisting, the larger man shrugged him off. "It's fine."

In answer Kimberly just held out his hand, displaying the man's blood on his own skin. Elric grimaced. "It's _fine_," he repeated, tugged away from Kimberly's grasp, "or would be if you'd let go."

Kimberly snorted and fell back into step beside him. "Fine," he agreed shortly. "You can tell it to the Colonel."

The Colonel, a sharp faced man with a bristling mustache, took their report with barely a glance up from his charts. At news of the squad's casualties he looked up briefly, then returned to his papers with a snort. "Alright," he said when they were done. One hand lifted, a short finger stabbing towards Kimberly. "I'll expect the written tomorrow." The finger pivoted, coming to rest on Elric. "Medical. Showers. Dismissed."

It didn't surprise Kimberly in the slightest when, outside of the Colonel's sight, Elric turned left towards the showers rather then right towards the white flagged medical enclosure. Nor was he surprised when the larger man stopped square within the door of the refitted train car that had been jury rigged as showers for the camp; or at the look that was fixed on him, saying plainly that he would turn away now if he knew what was good for him.

Elric was taller, broader and heavier than Kimberly, but Kimberly had never been all that fond of what other people deemed was "good" for him. He gave the other man a sharp edged grin and ducked past him, fingers already busy on the fastenings of his own coat.

It was just past mid-day, their squad returned early, and the shower was empty. Which meant water, plenty of it, and in temperatures that didn't require alchemy to be tolerable. Kimberly flung the rest of his uniform off in record time, skivving out of boots and pants and yanking the tie from his hair as he twisted the water on and ducked his head beneath the first shockingly cool spray. It warmed up quickly enough, just a little less than blood temperature, and that was heaven in and of itself, sluicing wet over sun heated skin to wash in dusty rivulets across the floor to the drains.

Dimly, half lost in the rush of water over his own ears, Kimberly heard another shower spray start up. He shook his hair back, wet and clinging, and chanced a look out of eyes slitted against the water spray. It answered as many questions as it answered and he ducked his head back under the shower for a moment, letting it rush wet down his neck and back before raising his voice.

"Riddle me this," he called conversationally, loudly enough to be heard above the splash and spatter of the water. "What sort of man does alchemy with no arrays?"

Elric said nothing but his shoulders stiffened, the motion of his hands raking through the wet strands of his dark gold hair stilling. Kimberly couldn't see his expression clearly in profile, the other man's face oddly bare when devoid of his glasses, but he could track the tension through the muscles of the man's arms. He tipped his head back into the spray again, nearly closing his eyes against it as he let it run over his scalp. "Nothing on your hands… I thought they might be on your arms, but they're not, are they?" It was a self evident question, answered in pale, unmarked skin, and Elric said nothing in response. Kimberly smiled and reached for the shower tap, twisting it off.

The other man had lowered his hands from his hair, standing stiff and straight as the water beat against his back. His eyes, turned towards Kimberly, were slitted in sharp squints that were both myopic and wary. Kimberly, his feet leaving wet prints on the floor, padded past the makeshift bench where Elric's uniform was folded, the sleeve torn and dark stained, and shoved right into the other man's space. Close enough to see the other man's eyes, gold slits under gold lashes, close enough that they were almost touching. Elric stood his ground, fists clenched, and Kimberly glanced down at his broad hands.

"I thought it might be inscribed, like Armstrong's," he said mildly. "But that's not it. You take your wedding ring off before you go out." Tendons in Elric's hands leapt, tightening, but Kimberly didn't care. His eye, traveling up the other man's bare arms, had found the next piece of the puzzle. "No arrays," he murmured, reaching out to sweep his inked palms over the other man's pale arms. "…And no blood."

The bullet had grazed his upper shoulder when it had ripped past them. There was blood - fresh and wet - soaked clear to the elbow of Elric's jacket, but on his arm there wasn't so much as a trace of it. Kimberly had a moment to press his fingertips to unmarked perfectly whole skin before Elric's hands caught his wrists, shoving him away. "Leave it," the other man growled.

"Oh," Kimberly said softly, not the faintest bit cowed, "I don't think so." He leaned forward, close enough that their chests touched as he pressed upwards to hiss the words in the other man's ear. "No arrays. No wound. No _history_, in an army that keeps triplicate records for decades. _What are you?_"

Elric, for all his size, was fast. Kimberly was faster, but Elric's hands were already wrapped around his wrists and on the wet slick tiles of the shower Kimberly couldn't get enough purchase to stop the larger man from slamming him, bodily, against the wall. Elric pinned him there, his wrists pressed fast above his head by the other man's hands, the older man's face tight and fierce and too close as he leaned in far enough to bridge the distance of his weak eyesight. "Enough!"

The sting of his back where he hit the tiles shook the laughter loose again, a quiet chuckle that Kimberly could all but taste behind his teeth. He couldn't break the larger man's grip; tried, and earned a sharp shake from the other man that beat him against the tiles. "None of your tricks," Elric growled, like the bass rumble of an angry wild cat, and Kimberly only laughed more.

"No tricks," he agreed, breathless. The spray of the shower was turning cold again, washing across the both of them, but the warm flush welling within him was just like the battlefield and he could barely feel the chill. "You've got me." He laughed, a short bark of sound that echoed off the walls. "I can't clap… but neither can you." Elric jerked, fingers digging into Kimberly's wrists, and Kimberly laughed again, low and sharp. "You need that, don't you? No arrays, but you write the circle in your own flesh and blood. A living conduit between your hands." It was pure heat just to _think_ of it, of circling the power not just through inked lines but through blood and vein and bone itself, writing equations into the pathways of arteries, and the warmth was in his stomach now, ricochetting off slick wetness and the press of skin on skin .

"You don't know what you're talking about," Elric snarled. Larger, heavier; he could hold Kimberly up by wrists alone and Kimberly could _let_ him, let the ache burn hot through his shoulders as he hooked his ankles around the back of the other man's thighs, pressing closer.

"Then _show_ me," he hissed and the warmth turned into fire, blossoming sweet and hot through him at the thought. Alchemy in the clap of a hand, as swift and deadly as a gun shot - had either of them been primed? Kimberly wasn't, his hands cold and inert in the other man's grasp, but he wasn't sure about Elric. The man's hands were curled around his wrists and he could imagine it so clearly, the flickering crackle of alchemy against his skin, changing the chemicals beneath that fragile covering into volatile mixes that begged to combine and explode. Hot, some of his victims had said, the change was hot and the heat was already there, sealed beneath the other man's grasp and flooding in a dull ache from the pit of his stomach to between his thighs. "Show me," Kimberly demanded, "_Do it,_" and Elric was so close but not close enough, Kimberly's knees pressed tight to the man's hips as the younger alchemist twisted upwards.

Elric's breath stuttered, hissed sharp between his teeth. "Stop it!" he demanded, but this time Kimberly was faster, his ankles locked tight in the small of the other man's back as he pressed them together.

"Let go," Kimberly gasped, "and we'll see who claps first. Do it. Do it, damn you, _show me_." Elric gasped as well, the sound almost pained, his fingers grinding the bones of Kimberly's wrists into the implacable wall. Gravity and his own weight was a fierce, aching burn through shoulders and chest but it was nothing compared to the fire pressed between their hips, Kimberly's throbbing cock sliding against the other man's half hard one.

"Do it," Kimberly breathed. "Circled through your whole body, isn't it? Hand to hand to complete the circle, through the arteries, twisting through your heart, you can _feel_ the equations in your bones. Fuck! Show me!" He thrust, sweet friction slide of skin on skin, and Elric hissed. The older man's lips were drawn back in a feral snarl and Kimberly bit back a moan; he couldn't get away, couldn't break the other man's hold, could only press closer, tighter, trapped between the wall and Elric's grip, caught in strong hands as lethal as Kimberly's own. "Phosphorus, postassium, chlorine, oxygen, it's all _there_, right _there_, you _know_ you want to. Tell them it was an accident, tell them I threatened you, tell them anything, just _do it!_"

For one moment, one crystal clear aching moment, Kimberly thought the other man just might. He couldn't catch his breath, fire already blazing through him, waiting with bated breath for the heat and pain of the components of his own body twisting to another's command.

And then Elric was _there_, really there, not just holding him but pinning him, body pressed to body and Kimberly's spine ground into the hard wall. He couldn't bite back a moan, bucking into the other man's warmth. Elric thrust him back, grinding him into the tiles. "Do you _want_ to die?" Elric growled.

"I want to _feel_ it," Kimberly snarled back. The spray of the water where it hit him was cold but the other man was hot between his thighs, hard and thick; his hands were going numb in the grip of clenched fingers, his muscles on fire, and he couldn't have stopped the jerk of his hips if he had wanted to. "I want to feel you press it out through your hands, undrawn, unstructured, written in your blood. I want to feel it go through you, I want to see it. Show me! What _are_ you?"

Elric crushed him, the older man's mouth sealing hard and rough over Kimberly's own. It was a gag, cutting off his words, all hard clash of teeth and the taste of blood. Kimberly sucked air in sharply through his nose, twisting, thrusting, nothing but fire and ache and friction. Elric pushed him back, slamming him against the tiles in a punishing rhythm, cock dragging rough against cock.

Kimberly came first, breath stuttering in his lungs as the fire tipped into pleasure, wrung through nerves stripped raw in a battery of ache and pain. Elric thrust hard against him for another handful of moments before going still, muscles quivering, sound and breath alike caught tight behind his clenched teeth as he came. The water, washing cold over them, seeped between them to lick at the sticky warmth.

Elric dropped him. Kimberly slid to the floor in a hard crash, muscles too stiff to catch himself, the fall jarring a sharp hiss of pain from him. By the time he unwound himself, scrambling up against wet tile to sit up, Elric had put at least two arms lengths between them, backing up as he scooped up his discarded clothes. The older man was breathing just as hard as Kimberly, great puffs through his nose, but his voice was flat and steady. "This didn't happen."

The water was fluctuating, hot one second, cold the next, like sharp needles falling against his skin. His muscles hurt, tight and limp all at once, and Kimberly fancied he could feel the bruises forming up the length of his spine the way he could already see the purpling marks of fingers pressed into his wrists. His cock twitched, duly throbbing in counterpoint to the ache everywhere else. Leaning back, he pressed his shoulders gingerly against the wall, raking wet hair from his face. "Does your wife know what she married?" he asked.

Elric stiffened, shoulders jerking back. Scooping up his clothes and glasses, he stalked furiously out of the shower, back as stiffly straight as a parade martinet.

Kimberly leaned his head back against the tiles, quietly laughing. If anyone could walk, naked and dripping, through the camp with only a folded uniform clutched in front of them for decency and _not_ get called out for it, it would be a man - yes, _man_, whatever else he was - like Elric. Kimberly laughed until the ache eased off some, until his head was pounding and the water was running cold again. Reaching up, he twisted the tap off. There was nowhere to go in the Ishballan desert. Nowhere to run. And Kimberly… Kimberly could be a patient man, when the prize was worth the wait.

He raised his hands, flexing life back into his fingers, and pressed a promising kiss to the array at the center of each palm. He could be patient. Some things were worth the wait and then some.


End file.
